Monday, July 12, 2004

OK, now it's time for me to do the Bookshelf Thing (don't wanna call it a "meme"...whoops, just did) that Rick Geerling started. Basically, it's an excuse to let people know what's on your favorite bookshelf, or your only bookshelf, or the one on which you put those special books, you know the ones.

Now Casa Bacardi, it's kinda small. Not a lot of room for bookshelves and stuff. I do have a large three-section set of shelves I had custom made, but they're for albums and CDs, and while once upon a time I had books on it, that's no longer the case as the audio army thoroughly routed the print army and forced them to retreat to storage in boxes in my basement, where they await the glorious day when General Bacardi will return and bring them up into the light and have the room to display them properly once again as they deserve. But this is not to say that I don't have any books upstairs; we actually do have one smaller shelf in the living room, which holds probably 150-200 books (a conservative estimate), so I have a lot of my relatively recent acquisitions and some which I've brought upstairs to peruse over the years...plus I share it with several of Mrs. B's reference and craft books. So basically, what I've got is about three shelves, plus the top of the bookcase, with books crammed in in all sorts of directions. In order? Hah! Not a chance. Anyway, what I'll do is list the first, oh, 35 titles I come across. Many of my absolute favorites will not make this list, due to circumstances beyond my control. Any conclusions you draw from this list is up to you. And I strongly encourage you to ask me about any of them you may not already be familiar with. Here we go...!

1. The Beatles Anthology by...the living Beatles, plus a bunch of ghost writers.
2. The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record by Roy Carr
3. The Art of Nick Cardy by John Coates with Nick Cardy
4. The Nearest Faraway Place by Timothy White
5. The Beatles Unseen Archives-compiled by Tim Hall and Marie Clayton
6. The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film by Michael Weldon
7. The Psychotronic Video Guide by Michael Weldon
8. Christgau's Consumer Guides of the 70s by Robert Christgau
9. The Phantom's Ultimate Movie Guide by "The Phantom" (Joe Kane)
10. The Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker and Leonard Wolf
11. Rock Family Trees-Pete Frame
12. The Studio- Barry Windsor-Smith, Mike Kaluta, Jeff Jones, Berni Wrightson
13. Nightmare of Ecstacy- The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. by Rudolph Grey
14. I'm A Believer by Mickey Dolenz and Mark Bego
15. Slovenly Peter by Dr. Hans Hoffmann
16. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell
17. Tell Me Why-Tim Riley
18. Hollywood Rock-Marshall Crenshaw and others
19. Nick Drake-The Biography by Patrick Humphries
20. Wild Cards vol. 1-Various, edited by George R.R. Martin
21. Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams by Nick Tosches
22. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
23. The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard DiLillo
24. Neuromancer by William Gibson
25. The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles G. Finney
26. It Was Twenty Years Ago Today by Derek Taylor
27. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
28. Von Bek by Michael Moorcock
29. Clockers by Richard Price
30. Kink by Dave Davies
31. Blake by Peter Akroyd
32. Loose Balls by Terry Pluto
33. Vineyard by Thomas Pynchon
34. The Secret History of Kate Bush by Fred Vermorel
35. I Me Mine by George Harrison

And there you have it! Can't tell you how tempted I am to take some of these off and put others on which are on the shelf below...but I'm determined to remain true to the spirit of the meme if not the letter.